Low Country (34 page)

I closed my eyes. Behind them, red and white lights

arced and pinwheeled.

“What would I die for?” I said soundlessly to myself,

and saw, not Clay’s face, not even that of my lost child,

or Carter’s…but today. The day just past. The island,

the dock, the low

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sun on the water, the dolphins, the ponies pounding

down the sandy road, a small child who was not my

child clinging in joy to one of the stumpy necks. My

house on its stilts, its head in the moss and live oak

branches. The island. My island.

I looked back at him.

“Yes,” he said, and now he was smiling.

“Well, let’s get you going,” he said, struggling to his

feet with the sweet, limp weight of the sleeping child

in his arms.

“No. I’m going to stay,” I said.

He studied me gravely.

“Are you sure? There’s lots of time for that. Today

was…a very full day for you.”

“I’m sure. You said it yourself, not long ago. There’s

no more time. Now is it, for me.”

He stood quietly in the dusk for a moment, and then

he shifted the child to one shoulder. She mumbled

sleepily, but did not really wake. I leaned over and

kissed her swiftly on the top of her head.

Luis Cassells put out his hand and touched my hair,

very lightly.

“Don’t drink, Caro,” he said.

He turned and went down the steps with his grand-

daughter, and in a moment was lost to my sight in the

darkness under the trees.

Presently, I heard the distant motor of the Peacock

Island Company pickup catch, and then

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it faded, and the great quiet came down again.

And I did not drink. I sat sleepless before my fire all

through the night, and I saw the dawn of New Year’s

Day born red behind the live oaks, but I did not drink.

10

I
t was a curious time, the first hours of that new
year.

I should have been bone-tired, but I was not. I felt,

instead, light and hollow and empty, but in no hurry

to seek whatever it was that would fill me. I was con-

tent to sit on the dock in the little wind off the ocean,

warm and heavy with the fragrance of things blooming

far to the South. I felt that I was waiting there for

something to come, but I did not know what, and was

not particularly threatened by its prospect, not even

curious. I was just…waiting.

Quite clearly my heart told me that it would not be

my child who came, not again to this place, and

somehow that was all right. I still had her at the core

of my being. The morning was still new. Whatever

was coming, it would emerge.

It was Hayes Howland who came. I was surprised

by that. I had not seen Hayes at the island

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house since the days just before Clay and I married.

But here he was, in his growling little Porsche, dressed

in his customary disheveled but well-tailored khakis

and apparently-slept-in cardigan sweater. He picked

his way through the wet, mossy grass as if to spare the

Gucci loafers, but they were already beyond salvation.

He wore sunglasses and had his hands thrust in his

pockets, and grinned up at me, the old Hayes grin.

“I thought you might be out here,” he said. “Got a

hair of the dog for a sinner?”

“Nope. Got coffee, though,” I said. “Come on up.

Did you sin egregiously last night?”

“I did. I sinned so grotesquely that I may not be able

to put my head back into the Carolina Yacht Club

again until the millennium. But if I can’t, at least sixty

other people can’t, and I don’t think the club can stand

the loss of revenue.”

He took off the glasses, and I saw that his eyes were

indeed reddened and pouched, with bluish shadows

in the thin, scored skin underneath. Like most red-

headed men, Hayes was aging early. The punishing

Lowcountry sun was not kind to him. There were

splotches and raised patches on his face and forearms

that would need medical attention before long, I

thought. The little white circles of scar that mean

treated skin cancers are a hallmark of the Lowcountry

male.

“Who all was there?”

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I did not much care, but this was obviously a social

call, since he showed no signs of having business to

transact or news to relate. He leaned against the deck

railing, his eyes shielded against the glitter of the sun

off the creek, and drank the coffee I brought, and

looked around, sighing appreciatively.

“Oh, the usual crowd. You know. This is really

something out here, isn’t it? I can see why you run

away from home so much. It’s a pity more people don’t

realize how beautiful the marshes are. They only want

oceanfront.”

“Well, let’s hope they never learn,” I said, annoyed

by his remark about running away from home. “You

know I don’t run away out here, Hayes. Clay knows

where I am. He’s out here with me when he can be.

And I’m really serious about this painting, whether or

not you think it’s worthwhile.”

He lifted a propitiatory hand.

“Badly put. I know you’re serious. You ought to be;

you’re really good. I was just admiring your view. It

could make people change their minds about the

ocean.”

“Yes, well,” I said shortly. I was not going to be

baited into a discussion of the Dayclear project. My

bubble time was not up yet. Technically I had until

tomorrow. And when I talked of it, it would be with

Clay, not Hayes Howland.

“So, did you see the New Year in all by your

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self?” he said, dimpling at me. I thought I knew where

he was going with this.

“I did. Absolutely nobody but me and a gator or

two. Best company I’ve had in ages.”

“Not what I hear,” he said in a schoolboy singsong

that made my jaw clench.

“And just what do you hear, sweetie pie?” I said,

grinning narrowly at him.

“I hear that you’re getting boned up on subtropical

landscaping, if you’ll pardon my pun.”

“You didn’t have to explain it, Hayes,” I said, rage

running through me like cold fire. “I get the allusion.

And where on earth did you hear a thing like that?

The only person I can think of who would know is our

friend Lottie. You been calling on Lottie, Hayes?”

He flushed, the ugly, dull brick color of the redhead.

Hayes disliked Lottie Funderburke even more than

Clay, so much so that I often wondered if he’d made

a move on her and been rebuffed. Lottie would not

have had Hayes on her property. He kept the grin in

place, though.

“Okay, truce,” he said. “I was out of line. I didn’t

come to pick on you.”

“No? Then why did you come?”

“I came to give you a message,” he said. “And to put

a proposition to you.”

I looked at him wearily.

“Hayes, if this has anything to do with…you know,

the new project, I don’t want to hear

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anything about it now, and when I do, I will hear it

from Clay. He said it was going to be spring at least

before we were ready to talk again.”

He studied me for a moment, and then set his coffee

cup down with a thump.

“Well, things have escalated,” he said crisply, and I

knew that our pleasantries were over and the skin of

my bubble had burst. I wanted to howl with desolation

and betrayal.

“Whatever it is, I want to hear it from Clay.”

“Clay is somewhere so deep in the wilds of Puerto

Rico that they don’t have phones,” Hayes said. “And

it can’t wait. If it could, do you think I’d be here? Do

you think this is my idea of a terrific New Year’s Day?

I’m missing four Bowl games and a brunch.”

I sat staring at him. He returned the stare for a long

moment, and then he dropped his eyes. Two hectic

red patches of color bloomed on his cheeks.

“Okay. Here’s the deal. The government is washing

its hands of the horses. They had a ranger out here in

December to try to make some kind of assessment

about their condition, and he couldn’t get close enough

to the herd to even see them, except for an old mare

and a colt. The mare kicked him. They’re not going to

maintain them anymore; not that they’ve been doing

much for the past five years or so. I don’t know what

they’re eating, but it can’t be much of anything.

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The guy said the hummocks are pretty much grazed

out. Caro, they’re going to starve if you don’t let the

company step in and do something about them.”

I was having a hard time keeping the glee I felt at

hearing that Nissy had kicked the ranger off my face.

I straightened my twitching mouth and regarded Hayes

with as much intelligence and interest as I could

muster.

“What is it that the company wants to do, Hayes?”

I said.

“Well, it all fits in with the proposition,” he said. “If

I promised you that we weren’t going to try to round

them up and…cull them…would you listen?”

“I’ll listen to anything except the idea of anybody

shooting them. I promise you I’ll shoot the first person

I see near them with a gun.”

He shook his head impatiently.

“No. There are a couple of options. One, we could

round them up and capture them and sell them to some

sort of wildlife preserve outfit, seeing as they’re bona

fide marsh tackies. There’d be some interest in them.

Two, we could sell them to people for their kids, or

whatever. Then there’s three. They can stay here and

be maintained in comfort, some might even say lux-

ury…”

“If.”

“Right. If. If you’d be willing to entertain the

310 / Anne Rivers Siddons

new proposal for the Dayclear project that we’ve come

up with.”

I sagged down slowly onto the top step of the deck

and looked out over the sunny marsh to the creek.

Over it a line of ungainly, prehistoric shapes lumbered

against the sun. The wood storks, out fishing in the

mild morning.

“Tell me about Dayclear, Hayes,” I said dully.

He sat down beside me.

“I’m going to leave it to Clay to tell you the whole

thing,” he said. “The nuts and bolts. He knows how

to talk about densities and site usage and such better

than I do. But what I want you to know especially is

that, with this new plan, the settlement is virtually

untouched. It stays just like it has been for…oh, a

hundred years, I guess. The bulk of the project’s…amen-

ities will be downriver about two miles, nearer the

waterway. We’ve ditched the idea of having the harbor

there completely. All that, and the housing and the

tennis complex will be sheltered with berms and heavy

new planting. The Gullahs won’t see anything when

they look out their windows but what they’ve always

seen. And the golf course will be a nine-holer, and it

will be near the bridge, so it’s isolated from the settle-

ment, too. There’ll be a quarter-mile of untouched

woods around it.”

“Wonderful. No idiot in a full Cleveland yelling fore

and driving a Titleist right into the middle of your

supper or your prayer service.”

Low Country / 311

He frowned.

“It’s a hell of a lot better from your standpoint than

it was the first time, Caro,” he said. “And that’s just

the beginning. We can divert the creek a little just

where it swings close by your house and deepen the

new tributary, so that boat traffic in and out to the

ocean won’t come by your dock. You shouldn’t see a

thing from here. You’ll scarcely hear it. This place and

the settlement will be completely isolated and set apart

with plantings and earthworks.”

“And the ponies? Do they get a berm of their own?”

He took a deep breath.

“What we’re proposing is this. Not only will we

preserve Dayclear itself, but we’ll restore it. We’ve got

some wonderful stuff from Sophia Bridges and there’s

a lot more coming; we’d recreate a Gullah settlement

of a hundred years ago, with authentic clothing and

housing and the old crafts, and young men and women

plowing and harvesting and making baskets and circle

nets and growing a little specimen cotton and indigo

and rice, and the old folks telling stories and singing

songs, and the children playing the old games. We’d

have a sort of educational complex, with a little rustic

building for films and dioramas, and a little crafts and

artifacts museum, and shops, and docents to take

people on tours, and special seasonal activities. Sophia

has some great

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stuff about Christmas and New Year’s services, and

songs and shouts and such. A regular story program

for kids, with a Gullah bard to tell the old ghost stories.

A petting zoo. Maybe a simple little café, with ethnic

specialities like yams and hoppin’ John and crabs…”

He stopped and looked at me expectantly. When I